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Friday, August 29, 2014

Welcome to this Friday Inspiration edition! Sadly, this is our last week for our summer Guest Designers before we issue in others in September, so we want to give them a warm send-off with a great big THANK YOU for all the fabulous designs they created past two months!! I've thoroughly enjoyed all the talent and new excitement they gave with my digis, and look forward to seeing them back in our monthly challenges!!

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Hi there! :) Today I thought I'd share a really fun thing you can do with Photoshop.... make a picture (like a cute digi!!) look like it's a PUZZLE! I use an older version of Photoshop (PS7) so those of you with newer versions should be able to do this too. The photo I'm using today is a Sneak Peek of a soon-to-be released digi called "Humphrey's Sunflower" (releasing Sept. 1st in my store!)

1. Open your photo in Photoshop

2. Duplicate your "Background" by clicking CTRL+J

3. Add a new Layer in between those 2 layers and fill with white

4. With the top layer (your picture) highlighted in your layers window, find at the top of screen where it says "Filter", click that, then TEXTURE > TEXTURIZER - a new window will open up.

5. Next to where it says "Texture" click the dropdown arrow and click LOAD TEXTURE

6. You will now need to find your puzzle texture. You can find it in your Photoshop presets under "texture". I get to this by clicking COMPUTER > C: DRIVE > PROGRAM FILES > ADOBE > PHOTOSHOP > PRESETS > TEXTURES > then click on the puzzle.

7. You can change the sliders to get it how you think looks good. I scaled mine to 200% with a relief of 5

Now you have a puzzle pattern on your photo! This next step is optional, but I like to take a few pieces out of the puzzle to make it look more realistic. Let's do that :)

8. Now if you try to use the magic wand tool to click a piece of the puzzle, you'll notice it doesn't like to choose just one. So.... go up to file and OPEN, and the same way we found the puzzle texture, let's find it again and open it in a new window.

Before we drag the white puzzle layer onto our photo, if you have a version of PS that allows you to resize your image (white puzzle) by percentage, you will need to resize it to the same percentage that you sized the puzzle texture back in step 7. Now drag it onto your photo and skip to step 12. If you can't resize an image by percentage (like mine) continue with step 9.

9. Drag the puzzle onto your photo

10. Now we're going to change the opacity of that white puzzle layer so we can see the original (lighter) puzzle texture on our photo. So change the opacity by sliding that opacity slider on your layers window to about 30%

11. Now with your selection tool, let's drag the lower right corner of the white puzzle so that the black lines meet up exactly with the lighter puzzle lines underneath.

12. Now change the opacity slider (of the white puzzle layer) to 0%. Now we'll be able to select just one puzzle piece at a time to remove!!

13. While on the white puzzle layer, use the magic wand to select one piece you want to remove. You'll notice it prolly doesn't select clear to the black line, so let's go up to the top of screen and click on SELECT > MODIFY > EXPAND. Enter a number from 1 to 5, let's try 3 to start. It should expand the selected pixels to fit closer to the black outline. You can do this again if it's not close enough.

14. Now on your layers window, click on the top photo layer and hit CTRL+SHFT+J all at the same time. What we just did was cut that piece from the photo and pasted it into a new layer. To see it, click on your selection tool, and now you can move that piece away from the original spot. Be sure that your new piece (layer) is moved up above the puzzle overlay in your layers window.

15. Now let's give the puzzle piece a Dropshadow so it looks like it's a piece on top of the puzzle instead of just pasted down. White on the single puzzle piece layer, click the F or FX icon at the bottom of that window (layer styles). Click Dropshadow and play with the sliders and click OK. Here's what I set mine to....

16. and Finally, let's copy that layer style (just right click on that layer in the layer window and click COPY LAYER STYLE and then click on the top photo layer and right click and PASTE LAYER STYLE.

We're done!! You can repeat the steps to remove more pieces from the puzzle like my top picture here if you'd like or leave it with just one. This makes a fun element for a card or use this tutorial with your family photos :)

For those with a Silouette Cameo or other newer cutting machine that can cut digis, you can try this puzzle texture to actually cut out your puzzle?? I don't have one of these machines, so I can't give a tutorial on that, but wouldn't THAT be fun?? :)

Remember we have a new FALL DIGI RELEASE on September 1st!! *Ü* Come check it out.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Hello friends :) There's only 5 more days left to enter our August challenge with the 'Dolphins' digi set! Remember, everyone who enters will receive next month's set FREE! *Ü* If you didn't get the Dolphin set free from playing last month, you can still purchase it at a discount and come link up :) Take a peek at these cuties from our Design Team....

Friday, August 22, 2014

Woot, it's FRIDAY! Has this week been like the longest week for any of you too?? Seems that way to me, but now it's time to P-A-R-T-Y! or at least get our craft on, Ha *Ü* Our designers have got a plethora (hey, use it 3x in a sentence and it's yours right?) of wonderful creations to share with you today!!